Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Over on Roles, Rules, and Rolls, Roger blogged about 'My Take on Damage from Travel.' I have seen, and used, many rules that pertain to environmental challenges. Some worked, some didn't. I thought about the ones I liked and bounced it of his 'requirements':

Players traveling in less than ideal conditions should risk daily damage to Hit Points.

The damage must be real Hit Points and heal in the standard manner - no extra bookkeeping.

The damage should scale, so that high level characters do not outlast low level ones to a ridiculous degree.

Easy to remember.

and decided for me the easiest approach to cover these areas and 'get-the-job-done' would simply take what is already there and use it: Elementals. Make it combat against the Elements, which it is in a sense. Cold? Through some Water and Air Elementals at them. Just describe it as a cold wind that cuts through their clothing and slices to the bone.Rain and mud slogging conditions? Water and Earth Elementals. "Attacks' would be building a fire, finding shelter, layering/removing clothes, etc. Give them a chance to hit with a d6 damage every time they take proper precautions or actions to circumvent the effects.

Base the AC of the 'Elementals' on how well the party is prepared for the condition. HPs based on how 'strong' the conditions are to over come.

I have been enamored with Zak'sUrban Crawl Rules for Slacker DMs since I found the post. I am not one for a lot of 'round' lines in an urban environment map, so I squared everything off using Libre Office (Open Office split since the buy out) Impress so I could quickly copy/paste the words and numbers. Again, just a thought experiment that I want to play out while I blog.

I am going to try this for the Manors, Villages, and Town/City of the Mini-Gazetteer I have been fiddling with. Zak started with Ten neighborhood and represented them with the words 'ONE' thru 'TEN' randomly written on a sheet of paper with varying colors of marker. This is a large City in my view, and was wondering how big various urban areas should be for a more 'medieval' feel. Ok, too much thinking, again. Go random, it is all the rage anyway:

I am considering a single 'Neighborhood' as a flat 'footprint' of the urban area. It could, and probably should, have several 'levels' for larger urban settlements. I mean, If I roll a 1 on a 1d10 for a Large City, that small of a footprint will not house the populace. It would have to be built vertically instead of horizontally to do so.

Rolling a d8 for the City of Yorkcast I got a 4. So, four neighborhoods. I could arrange the words; one, two, three, and four for the neighborhood layout, but I don't want every city to have the same number words. So I want to roll a d10 for times to find the number words I will use for this exercise; four, eight, three, and three.

Off to copy/paste the words into a new slide... Done, but how should they be positioned? Starting with the first number, four, I decide that another random roll is in order: 1d4 (1 normal, 2 +90, 3 +180, 4 +270). A 2, so rotating the 'four' ninety degrees... Now the 'eight'... a 3, so one-hundred and eighty degrees... place on the 1d4 side of the 'four', starting at 12 o'clock as position 1 and going clock wise... a 4, or left side... now for the other two 'three's...

I moved some stuff around and added a protective wall:

Somethings just scream out at me now, as a visual thinker. For example, two entrances, one in the South connected to the 'T' in 'THREE' and one to the West connected to the last 'T' in 'EIGHT'. Add some towers, etc... (and trim the image so it doesn't take up a huge white chunk of the blog!)

Next I will overlay a random number (1-0) over each letter of the neighborhood to show back alleys and such. More to come after I watch some 'Merlin'...